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“He does everything with such quality,
panache, and taste, and he does it thinking
about the future. He does it not expecting to
flip his properties. He wants to own them for
the long term.”
Headington, 68, initially wanted to be a
clinical psychologist. But his life took a big de-
tour as he was pursuing a Ph.D. at the Fuller
Theological Seminary in Pasadena. His father,
who ran a small oil and gas operation in
Oklahoma City with Headington’s uncle, had
an acute form of leukemia diagnosed. Head-
ington rushed home; his father died within
six weeks. “Not knowing anything, I figured
maybe if I can understand this business, I can
help,” Headington says.
Trial and error led him to Dallas, and by
2004, Headington had made enough money
that he could explore passion projects: not
just revitalizing Dallas but also learning
about and collecting art and financing Holly-
wood films likeThe Aviator andThe Departed
through GK Films, a production company
he co-owns. In 2008 he sold land in North
Dakota’s oil shale field to XTO Energy, nowWHEN TIM HEADINGTONwas 13 years old, his father pro-
posed that he skip school and accompany him on a
business trip to Dallas, a four-hour drive from their Oklahoma
City home. Like many other teenagers, Tim didn’t need much
convincing.
Approaching the city, on Interstate 35, they saw a sign that
read, “Welcome President and Mrs. Kennedy.” They diverted
downtown to see the parade. “At that time, the city was just
vibrant,” Headington recalls on a recent morning, standing on
the same block of Main Street where he had watched John F.
Kennedy’s motorcade pass by 55 years ago. “It was 10 people
deep on all sides.”
Of course, that day ended in tragedy. But watching the
parade and observing the street life it fomented gave Head-
ington an indelible impression of what a city could be. By the
time he settled in Dallas, in 1984, the crowds he once saw
were gone. The city’s well-heeled denizens had relocated to the
suburbs and deigned to come downtown only to shop at the
flagship Neiman Marcus department store, with its swift valet
parking service.
Headington wondered if he could revive downtown’s gran-
deur. In 2004, the Dallas National Bank building, a neo-Gothic
tower on the National Register of Historic Places, came on the
market. It stood across the street from where Headington had
watched the 1963 parade. As with playing hooky, he didn’t need
to be talked into it.
“I thought, How cool would it be to just have this building,”
Headington says, “to create something that gives people a reason
to come downtown and stay?”
That building is now the Joule hotel, the cornerstone of an
artful, cosmopolitan downtown that Headington has been
quietly building for the past 15 years. While the Joule retains
its 1927 facade, its interior melds museum and fun house, with
Murano glass mosaics and edgy works of art: engines corroded
in copper sulfate and then painted blue; a pop art painting of
parted lips.
Since opening the Joule in 2008, Headington has had a hand
in more than a dozen design-centric destinations in downtown
Dallas, including restaurants, bars, shops, another hotel, an
apartment building, and, most arrestingly, a public park with a
30-foot-tall bloodshot eyeball by the sculptor Tony Tasset.
“We didn’t know whether people would like it or hate it, but
we knew they would have a reaction to it,” Headington says.
Tall and burly, with shaggy hair, ruddy cheeks, and a warm
drawl, Headington may not fit the stereotype of a champion for
art, design, and thoughtful urbanity. He can be one thanks to his
day job: cofounder of Headington Energy Partners, the oil and
gas company that made him a billionaire. But his aesthetic and
his vision are changing Dallas for the better, says Dallas Mayor
Mike Rawlings, and ushering in a wave of fellow developers bent
on bringing the suburban masses back downtown.
“Tim, in some ways, is a modern-day Stanley Marcus,” says
Rawlings, referencing the late president of Neiman Marcus.
DESIGN
Commissary (above), a Headington-owned foodie
mecca in Dallas that’s covered in blue ceramic tile;
Forty Five Ten (right), a trendy downtown Dallas
boutique, restaurant, and café that also belongs
to Headington’s company.COMMISSARY:^ ADAM^MØRK—COURTESY^ OF^ HEADINGTON^ COMPANIES